Comic Strips

Ok so women cross their arms over their breasts about half the time I'm walking up to speak to them if we don't really know each other. I make a conscious effort not to stare at women's breasts because I was bad about it as a teen. It catches me off guard because I feel like they thought I was staring.

I'm a not totally ugly, six foot, in-shape man. I'm told that I'm charismatic. I have to walk up and initiate conversations with women I don't know generally several times a day, in a professional setting, for my job.

What is the deal with this? I hate it.

So, funny thing: a person's body language may or may not tell you something about what they're feeling, but it absolutely has an impact on how you perceive them. When you get advice to make eye contact, or not cross you arms, or ball your hands into fists and cock your arm (no, dude, I wasn't being aggressive; body language theory is such bullshit), it's saying less about what your internal mental state and more about how you're non-verbally communicating to others.

The bullshit part about body language isn't that it's not valid, because it is. The bullshit part is that there's some key that let's you interpret it unambiguously.

Some people avert their eyes when they lie. Some when they're disinterested. Some because they have social anxiety. I do it because I simply can't think clearly when I'm staring into someone's eyes, because I'm too busy drinking their souls. But when someone is talking and you avoid eye contact, whatever your reasons, they will tend to feel as if you aren't interested.

Anecdote time! The aunt of a friend was a local politician when Bill Clinton was running for re-election, and he stopped in town, gave a speech and mingled, so she got to meet him. She said his most amazing characteristic was that, when you were taking to him, you felt as if you were the only person in the room. He had no distractions, his eyes didn't wander to more important people, he wasn't thinking about other, more important things: when he talked to you, he had all of his attention focused on you, and was only listening to and talking to you.

That's what I think of when I think of effective body language. Regardless of what really was going on in Clinton's head, when he talked to someone, he was able to make them feel as if that's all he was doing: listening to and talking to them.

People who are lying often make prolonged eye contact as part of checking if you believe them.

If their arm does this:

It means:
They are a Nazi

If their eyes do that, they might be autistic.

Source: am autistic.

I've never heard averting eye contact means that. I do it all the time because I'm scared of making eye contact not because I'm disinterested or dishonest

Youtube Title: "Top CIA agent reveals TOP TEN telltale signs a SUSPECT is LYING"

Thumbnail: a person doing normal things like... scratching head... or touching face

🙄

Also fuck those "crime stories" youtube channels where the narrator keep mentioning the suspect's "body language" like if its indicative of anything.

Like bruh, they already read the results of the case, of course they know that the suspect is guilty/innocent, that "body language" is just hindsight.

What’s disappointing is that body language can definitely help to determine how people are feeling or what they are thinking, but the people who are into it the most just seem to forget it’s not a foolproof method to completely determine the truth.

Had me ready to rant until the last frame... well played.

I just don't know what to do with my hands most of the time and sometimes shoulder pain...

Wow, people have a lot of strong opinions on body language, as if when anyone dares to read into it/does not get a hint they must defend themselves for acting a certain way.

I was just looking at the comments to see if anyone else spend too much time online and now sees a political compass in the 4 colour coded boxes.